Rapid Review: Cave Run - Go Indiana Jones!
Cave Run ($1.99) by Ravenous Games is a new casual endless side scroller. The App Store is seeing more and more clones of the same game style, and now with Monster Dash’s success of the Canabalt style it makes sense to see more. Cave Run is the newest addition that has you playing an Indiana Jones look alike. You simply tap to jump, and the longer you hold the higher your character jumps.
Along the way there are tons of coins to collect, and there are rocks, ice patches, and mini volcanoes to deal with. You also level up as you go along which simply means the entire game speeds up requiring you to react that much faster. This is yet another game that is easy to pick up and play, and easy to give it one more try to beat your own high score, and compete for online high scores and achievements via OpenFeint.
The game has a great cartoon art style and theme that is so good you expect the rolling bolder to appear at any time. There really is a difference in jumping height and length based on how long you press, and it can make all the difference in survival. You’ll need to jump quickly over the little obstacles, and have big jumps over gaps, but never too big that you’ll miss the next gap.
The speed of the game becomes extremely rapid as you go, but it melds nicely by increasing a little bit at a time, but increasing often. Overall though the game just feels too simple, and you’re left wanting more. Collecting the coins seems irrelevant, but with a few upgrades to purchase it would really add a lot to this game.
If you’re not full with this genre yet, this is a fun little game. Monster Dash seems to be the class of this genre currently, and as Cave Dash stands it’s not worth it for $1.99 as it’s just too simple and repetitive.
